Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont 2018 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award Research Award
4-26-2018 Subverting the Systems: Strength in Victimhood through Malcom X's Anti-Jeremiad Carmen Sherlock Scripps
Recommended Citation Sherlock, Carmen, "Subverting the Systems: Strength in Victimhood through Malcom X's Anti-Jeremiad" (2018). 2018 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award. 2. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cclura_2018/2
This First-Year Award Winner is brought to you for free and open access by the Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in 2018 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected].
2018 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award
First Year Award Winner
Carmen Sherlock Scripps College
Reflective Essay
Reflective Essay
My introduction to the world of scholarly research began in the fall of 2017 in my first year Writing 50 class, when we were presented with the fairly open-ended task of creating a researched argument around a form of rhetoric (a notable speech, photograph, poem, etc.) that we had been previously exposed to in the class. While I was quickly drawn to the striking language in Malcolm X’s perennial speech “The Ballot or the Bullet,” I was at a loss as to how to create a scholarly argument around this immensely famous piece of American rhetoric. What, I wondered, is left to say about this speech? What gaps are there left to fill in the scholarly conversation about one of the most famous American leaders of the twentieth century?
An argument began to cohere when Claremont Colleges librarian Charlotte Brun introduced concept mapping to me, showing me how I can expand upon and draw conclusions from my initial ideas. I was struck, for example, by Malcolm X’s frequent use of the word
“chump” in his speech, and by concept mapping, I was able to connect this word to the notion of victimhood and flesh out the implications of this term: on the one hand, it suggests someone who is faultless and at the mercy and abuse of another, while on the other hand, it implies a culpability—and thus responsibility and agency—on the part of the “chump,” or “victim.”
I was able to develop this idea through further workshops with Charlotte Brun, where I was introduced to database search engines, like those of the Claremont Colleges Library and
EBSCO, which exposed me to the scholarly conversation surrounding Malcolm X’s rhetoric. I used the Claremont Colleges Library website’s research guides—namely the Africana Studies guide, the Cultural Studies guide, and the U.S. History guide—which granted me access to the
Black Studies Center database, the America: History and Life database, and the Academic
Search Premier. Exploring these databases I came across a variety of rhetorical strategies, and, eventually, the crux of my thesis: the method of rhetoric called the jeremiad, a model that
fundamentally embraces, and calls for a return to, the founding ideals of a society. Though some
scholars had categorized Malcolm X’s strategy as such, I found evidence for his employment of
the converse—the “anti-jeremiad”—due to the agency, independence, and shift toward Black
Nationalism that his use of the word “chump” implies.
I found information enough to defend this argument at Honnold Mudd library, where I
encountered rhetoric scholar Sacvan Bercovitch’s pivotal book, The American Jeremiad, which
analyzes the origins of the jeremiad as a strategy used by the Puritans. I wanted to contrast my
argument for Malcolm X’s anti-jeremiad with an example of a more modern, situationally
similar jeremiad, which I found in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech “I Have a Dream”: here, he
explicitly lauds the founding values of mainstream American culture (the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence), an ideology which differs fundamentally from Malcolm X’s call
for Black Nationalism.
During further workshops, Charlotte Brun showed me how to map and connect my
research. The library and databases revealed to me salient work by scholars such as Robert
Terrill, Celeste Michelle Condit, David Howard-Pitney, Kurt Ritter, and Keith Miller—leaders in the field of American rhetoric and Malcolm X—but I did not know how to see beyond these snippets of the scholarly conversation; I felt lost in the pages of online journals and library shelves. However, as I began to record and map out the bibliographies of the articles and books I was reading, I noticed a coherence: three people had cited Robert Terrill, for example, or Celeste
Michelle Condit had also drawn upon Kurt Ritter. Noting similarities between bibliographies allowed me to begin to see the full scope of the scholarly conversation. This perspective also allowed me to see the limits of the conversation. While many
scholars had written about the jeremiad as a rhetorical strategy, and some had even argued that
Malcolm X employed it, much less was said on its converse, the anti-jeremiad, and none had
argued for Malcolm X’s use of it. This was the niche I was able to fill, and I therefore cited
scholar Darryl Dickson-Carr’s argument for Malcolm X’s use of the jeremiad and refuted it,
citing scholar Keith Miller’s classification of Malcolm X’s rhetoric as well as the primary text
itself to demonstrate how the fundamental renunciation of mainstream American culture implied
by his use of the word “chump” is in fact an employment of the anti-jeremiad strategy of
rhetoric. And further using the library’s extensive databases, I was able to research the history and the implications of Malcolm X’s notion of victimhood, finding the dual usage of this term as far back as in the writings of Augustine of Hippo, and encountering recent psychological studies on the effects of self-labeling and reclaiming controversial identities.
Beginning with concept-mapping, I was able to expand my initial fascination with
Malcolm X’s galvanizing rhetoric into an examination of a discrepancy—the implications of his usage of the word “chump”—that, I found, was unaddressed by scholars in the field. Navigating the library website’s research guides, I discovered a strategy of rhetoric previously unheard of to me, and was able to connect this idiosyncrasy of Malcolm X’s speech to the antithesis of this mode of rhetoric. By mapping out my research and tracking others’ citations, I was able to grasp the limitations of the scholarly conversation and insert my own research into the discussion.
Without the databases of the Claremont Colleges Library and the support of librarian Charlotte
Brun, I would not have been able to contribute to this discussion of Malcolm X’s rhetoric and discover the thrill that is asserting your own voice into the scholarly conversation.
2018 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award
First Year Award Winner
Carmen Sherlock Scripps College
Research Project “Subverting the Systems: Strength in Victimhood through Malcolm X’s Anti-Jeremiad”
Subverting the Systems: Strength in Victimhood through Malcolm X’s Anti-Jeremiad
Carmen Sherlock
Professor Kimberly Drake Scripps College Fall 2017
Abstract: The jeremiad is a rhetorical strategy found in countless fields—including the speeches
of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr.—which laments a society’s current situation
and calls for a return to the essentially good principles upon which it was founded. Some
scholars have argued that the rhetoric of Malcolm X employs this strategy; however, through an
analysis of his speech The Ballot or the Bullet, I argue that it in fact does the opposite: he uses
the anti-jeremiad, a rhetorical pattern that fundamentally renounces the dominant ideals of, in
this case, the twentieth-century United States. I reach this conclusion from an analysis of his
ironic treatment of the notion of victimhood, specifically exploring the implications of his use of
the word “chump” and examining how this assigns a peculiar responsibility, and thus agency, to his audience, reinforcing his anti-jeremiad call for intentional separation and Black Nationalism.
I later consider studies of such self- and group-labeling and label reclamation, which have found that, for example, the reclamation of victimhood actually diminishes the stigma attached to that label and greatly increases a community’s perception of its own power.
Keywords: Malcolm X, jeremiad, anti-jeremiad, victim, Black Nationalism
Subverting the Systems: Strength in Victimhood through Malcolm X’s Anti-Jeremiad Amongst the many strategies of American orators, scholars have identified a frequent
pattern of rhetoric called the jeremiad, a rhetorical tradition influentially examined by the scholar
Sacvan Bercovitch. The jeremiad—eponymously coined after the laments of the Old Testament
prophet Jeremiah (Campbell)—first emerged as a rhetorical strategy amongst seventeenth-
century Puritans, and Bercovitch defines this early manifestation of the jeremiad as a "political
sermon—what might be called the state-of-the-covenant address” (Bercovitch). Expanding upon the Puritan (and solely white) communities Bercovitch originally studied, scholars continued this examination, identifying the “modern American jeremiad,” which is no longer necessarily linked to religion but rather, as rhetorical critic and scholar Robert Terrill characterized, is a warning linked with an optimistic preview of coming glory. It has been used by many nineteenth- and twentieth-century orators; here I will be examining its position in the Civil Rights Movement, and, specifically, Malcolm X’s usage of it (or lack thereof). As identified by scholars Elizabeth
Lei and Keith Miller, the modern American jeremiad is comprised of three key elements: “A consideration of the freedom promises in America’s founding documents, a detailed criticism of
America’s failure to fulfill this promise, and a prophecy that America will achieve its promised greatness and enjoy unparalleled happiness” (Lei). Clearly, then, the jeremiad is valuable to the rhetor aiming toward an inclusion in the dominant culture; David Howard-Pitney suggests that a rhetor’s use of the jeremiad signals a “virtually complete acceptance of and incorporation into the national cultural norm of millennial faith in America’s promise” (Howard Pitney). It is a rhetorical strategy contingent upon the acceptance of mainstream culture, as it by definition laments the distance separating the current realities of American society with those found in the nation’s founding ideals; it is a “corrective to conditions gone awry” (Owen). The jeremiad, spanning many centuries and communities, is a strategy that has evolved from the religious to the political, protesting current conditions but affirming a community’s most essential ideals.
The modern American jeremiad is found in a myriad of mediums, from the speeches of
Robert F. Kennedy (Murphy) to Steven Spielberg’s film Saving Private Ryan (Owen) to Rachel
Carson’s Silent Spring (Slovic). And, most notably here, many African American orators have
historically employed the American jeremiad. Howard-Pitney states that “[Frederick] Douglass and [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] used the powerful ritual of the jeremiad to legitimate the goals that they sought, raise guilt among white Americans, and demand social change” (Miller,
Plymouth Rock). In King’s speech “I Have a Dream,” for example, he says,
When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and
the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every
American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men—yes, black men as well
as white men—would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note inso
far as her citizens of color are concerned. (King)
This excerpt is a clear outlining of the jeremiad; it rests on the understanding that the ideals of
America—those found in the nation’s founding documents—are fundamentally good, and urges
for a return to the original ideals of the country. Indeed, the jeremiad is a widely accepted
classification for much of the early eighteenth-century through mid-1960s African American
rhetoric (Miller, Plymouth Rock).
Some scholars, like Darryl Dickson-Carr, have classified the rhetoric of influential Civil
Rights leader Malcolm X as a jeremiad, arguing that he “offer[ed] hope even as [he] lamented
the nation's failed promise and predicted its destruction” (Dickson-Carr). However, through an
examination of one of his most well-known speeches entitled “The Ballot or the Bullet,” I argue that Malcolm X employs the very opposite, the “anti-jeremiad.” First delivered on April 3, 1964 in Cleveland, Ohio at the Cory Methodist Church (Terrill), the speech was given to the predominantly African American audience comprising a meeting sponsored by the Cleveland
Chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an organization “which was shifting from nonviolent protest to Malcolm X-like black nationalism” (Miller, Malcolm X). Malcolm X was integral to the spread of Black Nationalism in the Civil Rights Movement, and he propelled this ideology through the powerful rhetoric of his public addresses such as “The Ballot or the Bullet.”
The characteristics of Malcolm X’s rhetoric are well known: throughout his speeches and in
“The Ballot or the Bullet,” he emphasizes the common goals shared within the black community over their allegedly inconsequential and detrimental differences, fiercely championing Black
Nationalism as African Americans’ strongest identity and urging them to create independent communities and stop relying on their white oppressors (Malcolm X). He rejects his given
“slave-name”—he was originally born “Malcolm Little”—and advocates for a deliberate separation from the white community, never dismissing violence as an effective means to achieve this separation (Miller); this ideology contrasts the explicit jeremiad rhetoric of other orators like King, who did not propagate such a renunciation of white America.
In light of these dramatically differing ideologies between Civil Rights leaders (most notably between King and Malcolm X), an opposite strategy was identified: other scholars proposed the aforementioned anti-jeremiad, a rhetorical strategy that differentiates itself from the jeremiad through its fundamental rejection of dominant society (Miller, Plymouth Rock)—or, as
Deborah Atwater described, its “denunciation of American ideals as hypocrisy” (Atwater). Kurt
Ritter built upon this term, specifically positing Malcolm X as a representative of this type of rhetoric (Ritter); however, few other analyses of his relationship to this strategy have been made. I have found evidence for this antithetical model of rhetoric in “The Ballot or the Bullet,”
where Malcolm X does indeed employ the anti-jeremiad. Though there is, as shown, ample
academic discourse surrounding the jeremiad tradition and a limited study of Malcolm X’s
relation to it, there is very little analysis examining the ways in which specific aspects of
Malcolm X’s rhetoric actually substantiate this aforementioned rejection of the jeremiad. I
propose that a large part of the anti-jeremiad power and efficacy of the speech comes from
Malcolm X’s treatment of the word “victim.” His frequent use of the word enforces Atwater’s postulated definition of anti-jeremiad rhetoric on which his Black Nationalism ideology rests via his unorthodox, dual usage of it. Employing two differing definitions of victimhood, Malcolm X ironically shifts the blame—and thus responsibility and agency—from the oppressors to the
oppressed, urging African Americans not to assimilate to dominant culture, as does the
traditional jeremiad, but to render their boundaries and persecuted identities as strengths in
constructing fully self-reliant, separate communities. I will examine how Malcolm X does indeed
exercise the anti-jeremiad, through his ironic treatment of victimhood, to subvert dominant
American culture and give African Americans agency, reinforcing his fundamental call for Black
Nationalism.
The Oxford English Dictionary provides two notable definitions of the word “victim.”
The first is “a person who is put to death or subjected to torture by another; one who suffers
severely in body or property through cruel or oppressive treatment” (Oxford). This denotes a
person subject to the will and oppression of others—a will that is inflicted unfairly upon them—
and, most importantly, it is a passive identity: something is happening to the victim. The second
definition, however, provides a different conception: that of “a person who is tricked or duped”
(Oxford). A synonym for this definition, amongst others, is “chump” (Oxford). This definition implies a shift in fault; to be tricked is frequently perceived as the fault of the person tricked, so the responsibility implicitly lies in the victims themselves. Malcolm X juxtaposes these largely contradictory definitions of the word, primarily addressing his audience with the latter to ironically emphasize their culpability—and thus ability—to modify their situation (Malcolm X).
Further, the notion of victimhood has a long history of nuance: discussion of the term’s capability for this dual weakness and triumph is centuries old. The early fourth-century philosopher Augustine of Hippo, for example, declared Christ “both a Victor and a Victim—a
Victor because a Victim” (Schlueter). Scholar Nelvin Vos expanded upon these “two orderings of experience” developed by Augustine, examining the way in which comedy allowed them to coexist and thus positing the term “comic-victim” as an explanation for this seeming contradiction. As defined by Vos, the comic-victim is a trope that
…affirms the presence of basic incongruity within man, among men, and between man
and the infinite… When man is cut off from his religious or metaphysical roots, he is lost,
all his struggles become senseless, futile, and oppressive… the ‘comedy’ in such theory
lies in perceiving that…the entire drama of man’s history is set against the backdrop of
cosmic disorder, chaos, and incongruity. (Schlueter)
Vis-à-vis Augustine’s and Vos’s analysis of the “victorious” victim, one is able to see the earlier roots of Malcolm X’s conception of victimhood: it is, in fact, a manifestation of the comic- victim. He uses his jesting rhetoric to suggest the absurdity of the comic-victim’s situation, emphasizing this “incongruity among men” when saying, “The government has failed us… the white liberals who have been posing as our friends have failed us” (Malcolm X). He laments, but does not try to fix, this incompatibility; indeed, his rhetoric certainly corresponds to the trope of the comic-victim as the issue is set against the backdrop of basic incongruity, a severance from the original culture and a distancing from the dominant culture experienced now. Malcolm X makes a sort of power, or victory, available to his African American audience in his fundamental affirmation of chaos and incongruity; their capability for victory is contingent upon their experience of irrevocable incongruity as victims in the second interpretation of the word.
Initially, Malcolm X briefly employs the first definition of the word “victim” to express an obvious anger and frustration towards the oppression African Americans have been subject to.
He explicitly demonstrates this, saying, “I’m one of the 22 million black victims of the
Democrats… of the Republicans… of Americanism… I don’t speak as a Democrat, or a
Republican, nor an American. I speak as a victim of America’s so-called democracy” (Malcolm
X). Here the blame unequivocally—and expectedly—rests in the hands of the government; however, rather than employing the traditional lament of the jeremiad (as King does in regard to
America’s unfulfilled Constitution), Malcolm X explicitly separates himself from America’s political identities, definitively blaming his condition on them and declaring himself a victim of the political system. Conveying the first—and more commonly understood—definition of
“victim,” he reinforces his and the audience’s feelings of outwardly-directed anger and assumes the paradigm of victimhood most frequently established. Even this conventional treatment of victimhood, though, recalls not the “consideration of the freedom promises in America's founding documents” nor a “detailed criticism of America's failure to fulfill this promise” found in the jeremiad (Lei) but a blatant incongruity and renunciation of dominant culture, rejecting even a bastion of the mainstream American Dream: democracy (Cullen).
Throughout the majority of the speech, however, Malcolm X employs the second definition of “victim” by means of its synonym, “chump,” in a scathing and ironic criticism of
African Americans. When discussing the recent marches on Washington, he comments, “He [— the government—] tricked you… He made a chump out of you. He made a fool out of you. He
made you think you were going somewhere and you end up going nowhere but between Lincoln
and Washington” (Malcolm X). The event in question was the immensely successful 1963 March
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, for which 250,000 people turned out (Gavins) and Martin
Luther King, Jr. delivered his immortalized jeremiad “I Have a Dream” (Howard-Pitney).
However, Malcolm X’s biting rhetoric challenges this protest, implying that it was a trick by the
government, whose goal was to create the illusion that progress was being made simply by
marching. Using the vaguely good-natured yet humiliating word “chump,” Malcolm X assigns
the second definition of “victim” to African Americans, categorizing them as a people who
allowed themselves to be tricked. He furthers this argument when describing the consequences of
voting, saying, “You put them first, and they put you last ‘cause you’re a chump, a political
chump… Anytime you throw your weight behind the political party… that can’t keep the
promise that it made to you during election time, and you’re dumb enough to walk around
continuing to identify yourself with that Party, you’re not only a chump, but you’re a traitor to
your race” (Malcolm X). He ruthlessly critiques African Americans, faulting their responses to
oppression more than the oppressors themselves. He goes so far as to imply it is African
Americans, not white people, actively betraying the black race, for a desire for integration, he
implies, denotes a desire to be white. Though this is a startling accusation, it is not an
irredeemable criticism. It asserts an ownership to African Americans, portraying them as
responsible for—and thus “able to respond” to (Oxford)—their discrimination, which enables an unconventionally powerful agency.
Malcolm X’s apparent accusations in fact assign immense power to his audience, and there is a parallel between Malcolm X’s treatment of the words “victim” and “chump” and his underlying call to and strategy for action. When addressing African Americans with the second definition of victimhood, he does so in an unusually humorous, good-natured manner. It is typically a source of shame to be tricked by the oppressor; however, throughout his speech,
Malcolm X subtly draws strength from this normally oppressive and shameful title. To incite action, he says, “A chump can sit. A coward can sit. Anything can sit. Well you and I been sitting long enough, and it’s time today for us to start doing some standing, and some fighting to back that up” (Malcolm X). By using the definition of “victim” (through “chump”) that finds fault in the oppressed, Malcolm X is actually putting the power back in African Americans: they have the capability, and thus responsibility, to fight for their justice. Parallel to his strategy of label reclamation, Malcolm X later subverts the historically oppressive act of segregation in arguing for black autonomy, which he urges can be achieved through separation. He explains,
“The strategy of the white man has always been divide and conquer… He tells you I’m for separation and you for integration… No, what you and I is for is freedom… Only you think integration would get you freedom, I think separation would get me freedom” (Malcolm X). The historical segregation of African Americans greatly deepened the racial divide; however, when urging African Americans to create their own independent communities, he implies that they must render this segregation into an advantageous, self-directed separation, using it to heighten their non-reliance on white people and create black businesses, organizations, and churches.
Through both methods, Malcolm X employs a redefinition, or reinterpretation, of words and laws
African Americans have been oppressed by to reclaim their power independently, fundamentally rejecting the traditional jeremiad’s adherence to dominant white culture through an essential repurposing of the very original words and systems.
The extent to which this treatment of victimhood negates the jeremiad becomes even clearer when one considers the audience, and later, subjects, of this speech. Civil Rights leaders
such as King used the jeremiad to, amongst other things, “legitimate the goals that they sought
[and] raise guilt among white Americans” (Howard-Pitney). Emphasizing victimhood, then,
could be seen as an effective strategy in soliciting guilt from the dominant culture and thus acting
in accordance with the traditional jeremiad’s strategy, as the first definition fundamentally calls
for the oppressor’s complicity. However, the audience of this speech was, as noted, primarily
African American (Miller, Malcolm X). To evoke victimhood within an all-black community
further negates this first conception of victimhood. The oppressors are not even physically
present; rather than lamenting a bygone era of mainstream (white) American ideals, such an
absence of the oppressor coupled with Malcolm X’s victim-oriented treatment of victimhood
further reinforces African Americans’ agency in their situation. And, in other instances, the
oppressor is not even present in Malcolm X’s discourse; he proclaims, “…until we become
politically mature we will always be mislead, lead astray, or deceived or maneuvered into
supporting someone politically who doesn’t have the good of our community at heart” (Malcolm
X). The salient discrepancy here is the deliberately passive voice Malcolm X assigns to white
Americans. He does not suggest an end to their racist practices as a solution; rather, he suggests a
coming-of-consciousness of black Americans. This physical and verbal exclusion of white
America implies an overall denunciation of mainstream culture and thus an emphasis on the agency of African Americans through anti-jeremiad rhetoric.
Contemporary research has been done on the effects of varied interpretations of victimhood. It’s a topic explored by psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim, who claimed that for a community to recover from victimization, they must reintegrate themselves, or “do something with and about the experience, [which] often involves recognizing the small part the victim played in encouraging the abuse. …Victims need to be seen as active participants in the
formation of the victim-oppressor consciousness” (Bumiller). Though the notion of victim- blaming is highly controversial (Dijk), Malcolm X indeed utilizes this strategy suggested by
Bettelheim, ironically emphasizing African Americans’ culpability in this identity of victimhood.
He does not encourage reintegration in the sense of assimilation to white culture, but stresses the
“active participation”—and thus capability for agency—of African Americans, asserting a certain power to their situation through this emphasis on their victimhood. And studies have examined the effects of such self-labeling: in a recent study done for the Association for
Psychological Science analyzing one hundred to two hundred undergraduates, scholars found that “self-labeling increased self-labelers’ perceptions of their own power and increased observers’ perceptions of the self-labelers’ and the stigmatized group’s power. Perceived power was then a critical ingredient in attenuating the stigma attached to the label after self-labeling”
(Galinsky). Modern researchers have thus proved that Malcolm X’s counterintuitive usage of victimhood can in fact yield highly successful results. This treatment of victimhood is essential to the anti-jeremiad’s fundamental rejection of dominant culture and thus of dominant culture’s labels, for blame is circulated within the African American community, not outside of it, and research explicitly supports its efficacy: Malcolm X’s labeling of his African American audience in fact empowers them and decreases the stigma of victimhood.
Another key aspect to the efficacy of his rhetoric, also studied by Galinsky, is his provocation of group mentality, which he evokes in a previously discussed passage when saying,
“A chump can sit. A coward can sit. Anything can sit. Well you and I been sitting long enough, and it’s time today for us to start doing some standing” (Malcolm X). His deliberate self- inclusion within this population of “chumps” is paramount to the success of his strategy; the effects of collective labeling have been studied by Galinksy of Columbia University, who concluded that “self-labeling was driven by group, but not individual, power… A group’s power helps determine the likelihood of self-labeling, and once a group begins self-labeling, group power is perceived as increasing” (Galinsky). Clearly, then, Malcolm X’s frequent inclusion of himself amongst African American victims heightens the power he aims to instill within his audience. By identifying all African Americans—including himself, a leader with power and influence—as victims, he assigns a common power and legitimacy to the label, rendering it not an attack on individual character but a collectively embraced identity. Malcolm X’s emphasis on the collective identity of African Americans is vital to the success of his usage of victimhood and to his anti-jeremiad aim of establishing legitimate, powerful communities separate from those of dominant white America.
Malcolm X’s usage of the anti-jeremiad in his speech “The Ballot or the Bullet” subverts the concept of victimhood, shifting the agency from mainstream white culture to African
Americans. The efficacy of this strategy has been proved: studies have shown that the self- labeling of derogatory or disempowering titles in fact lessens their potency and yields increased feelings of empowerment amongst groups in question. However, in today’s world of increasing sexual assault allegations and reports of police brutality, where so many are harmed by systems of oppression, the question of culpability and agency—and thus, of victimhood—controversially arises: many prefer the term “survivor,” for example, to the arguably demeaning identity of
“victim,” which to some implies a passive, helpless product of crime. Malcolm X offers a repossession of victimhood as a label that in fact implies one’s agency, and his reclamation of the term holds as much relevance today as it did in decades past. By assigning his audience an identity entirely distinct from the oppressor’s, Malcolm X calls us to question the true limitations of victimhood today. His rhetoric in “The Ballot or the Bullet” demonstrates to our victim-wary world that one must use the preexisting systems—or labels—of oppression to gain power, rendering autonomous identities and communities out of separation and claiming agency through a fundamental subversion of dominant language and culture.
Works Cited Atwater, Deborah F. “A Dilemma of Black Communication Scholars: The Challenge of Finding
New Rhetorical Tools.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 1984, pp. 5–16.
Pennsylvania State University, doi:10.1177/002193478401500102.
Bercovitch, Sacvan. The American Jeremiad. University of Wisconsin Press, 2012.
Bumiller, Kristin. The Civil Rights Society: The Social Construction of Victims. J. Hopkins
University Press, 1992.
Campbell, Donna M. “Forms of Puritan Rhetoric: The Jeremiad and the Conversion Narrative.”
Literary Movement, Washington State University, 4 July 2013,
public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/jeremiad.htm.
Condit, Celeste Michelle, and John Louis Lucaites. “Malcolm X and the Limits of the Rhetoric
of Revolutionary Dissent.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 23, no. 3, Mar. 1993, pp. 291–
313. Sage Publications, Inc., doi:10.1177/002193479302300301.
Cullen, Jim. The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation. Oxford
University Press, 2006.
Dickson-Carr, Darryl. “‘Why Am I Called upon to Speak Here to-Day?" The Jeremiad in the
Speeches and Writings of Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X.” Nineteenth Century
Prose, 22 Sept. 2000.
Dijk, Jan Van. “In the Shadow of Christ? On the Use of the Word Victim for Those Affected by
Crime.” Criminal Justice Ethics, vol. 27, no. 1, 2008, pp. 13–24., doi:10.1080/0731129x.
2008.9992224.
Galinsky, Adam D, et al. “The Reappropriation Of Stigmatizing Labels: Implications for Social
Identity.” Association for Psychological Science, vol. 24, no. 10, 16 Aug. 2013, pp. 221–
256. SAGE Journals, doi:10.1016/s1534-0856(02)05009-0. Gavins, Raymond. The Cambridge Guide to African American History. Cambridge University
Press, 2016.
Howard-Pitney, David. The African American Jeremiad: Appeals for Justice in America.
Revised ed., Temple Univ. Press, 2005.
King, Martin Luther. “I Have a Dream.” March on Washington. March on Washington, 28 Aug.
1963, Washington, DC.
Lei, Elizabeth Vander, and Keith D. Miller. “Martin Luther King, Jr.'s ‘I Have a Dream’ in
Context: Ceremonial Protest and African American Jeremiad.” College English, vol. 62,
no. 1, Sept. 1999, pp. 83–99. National Counsel of Teachers of English, doi:
10.2307/378900.
Miller, Keith D. “Malcolm X (1925-1965).” Malcolm X (1925-1965), Georgetown University,
faculty.georgetown.edu/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/xmalcolm.html.
Miller, Keith D. “Plymouth Rock Landed on Us: Malcolm X's Whiteness Theory as a Basis for
Alternative Literacy.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 56, no. 2, Dec.
2004, pp. 199–222., doi:10.2307/4140647.
Murphy, John M. “A Time of Shame and Sorrow: Robert F. Kennedy and the American
Jeremiad.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 76, no. 4, 1990, pp. 401–414. Taylor &
Francis, doi:10.1080/00335639009383933.
Owen, A. Susan. “Memory, War and American Identity: Saving Private Ryan as Cinematic
Jeremiad.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 19, no. 3, 2002, pp. 249–282.
Taylor & Francis, doi:10.1080/07393180216565.
“Responsible, n.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press. Web. 08 Dec. 2017.
Ritter, Kurt W. “American Political Rhetoric and the Jeremiad Tradition: Presidential Nomination Acceptance Addresses, 1960â1976.” Central States Speech Journal, vol. 31,
no. 3, 1980, pp. 153–171. Taylor & Francis, doi:10.1080/10510978009368054.
Schlueter, Paul. “The Drama of Comedy: Victim and Victor. Nelvin Vos.” The Journal of
Religion, vol. 47, no. 3, July 1967, pp. 268–270. The University of Chicago Press, doi:
10.1086/486059.
Slovic, Scott. “Epistemology and Politics in American Nature Writing.” Green Culture:
Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America, edited by Carl George Herndl and
Stuart Cameron Brown, University of Wisconsin, 1996.
Terrill, Robert. “Protest, Prophecy, and Prudence in the Rhetoric of Malcolm X.” Rhetoric &
Public Affairs, vol. 4, no. 1, 2001, pp. 25–53. Michigan State University Press, doi:
10.1353/rap.2001.0016.
“Victim, n.” Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Web. 05 Oct. 2017.
X, Malcolm. “The Ballot or the Bullet.” American Studies. 3 Apr. 1964, Cleveland, Ohio, Cory
Methodist Church, xroads.virginia.edu/~public/civilrights/a0146.html.
2018 The Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award
First Year Award Winner Carmen Sherlock Scripps College
Concept Map